With the proliferation of digital media and the expansion of
music distributed around the world, the work of a DJ to create a unique piece
of work that goes beyond what has been previously recorded has to be
challenging, if not downright daunting.
I’m certain there will be naysayers, but DJs are musicians. While in general they are not physically
creating the music through musical instruments, they are taking songs, sound
clips, and other things they can find in order to create songs and albums that will
reach a broader audience, much like a guitarist, pianist, or whomever would attempt
to write a riff or song or album that is different from what anyone else has
released. Sure, there are “formulas” for
writing, but a true innovator will rework the formula to improve it.
Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden is a DJ that has embraced technology
in order to obtain the samples he uses for his songs. Unlike the traditional DJs who use two or
more turntables and a large collection of vinyl records, Hebden has a
tremendous collection of digital samples that he borrows from in order to
create his music. From a purely storage
and organizational point of view, this is probably the easiest way to go now;
with a 1-TB external hard drive you can store 2,000 hours of uncompressed audio
files or 17,000 hours of compressed audio (at 128 kB/s). A traditionalist could have crate after crate
after crate of vinyl records but would probably not come close to the amount of
available audio a digital storage device would have. A tradeoff between digital and analog vinyl
is that vinyl has a warmer sound to it; digital music, despite what efforts the
user takes to rip the music, really cannot achieve this warmth.
All of this said (having expanded this tangent for long
enough), Four Tet’s Rounds expands on
the sounds Hebden delivered on Pause
to create a record that has been critically-acclaimed and led Hebden to more
gigs and recording opportunities with other artists.
# 30 - Four Tet, Rounds (Metascore = 89)
I heard Four Tet’s record Rounds prior to hearing Pause,
so perhaps my impressions of Pause
were affected by that. Pause was a good record, particularly
for it being the first big label release.
Rounds takes the sounds from Pause to a whole new level. Unlike Pause,
Rounds sounds and feels more
cohesive. There is something more
organic about the way that Hebden has pieced the music and sound clips together
that the record doesn’t totally feel like CGI, or rather CGS (since CGI would
be images, CGS seems more appropriate, which probably doesn’t exist in this
fashion, but whatever).
Gone in my opinion is the “folktronica” or whatever hokey
descriptions were given for Pause. Still here is the Asian influence (Hebden’s
parents are from India, though he grew up in London) and a broader palette of
beats to improve on the overall ambience he created in Pause. One critic even
hinted that Hebden had integrated cinematic ideas into this record, which, upon
a further listen to the record, I can hear what that critic is hearing. How Hebden has set up the track order could
play easily into a Ocean’s Eleven
crime caper.
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